Creating multimedia tutorials requires two distinct steps: capture and editing. While editing, authors have the opportunity to devote their full attention to the task at hand. Capture is different. In the best case, capture should be completely unobtrusive so that the author can focus exclusively on the task being captured. But this can be difficult to achieve with handheld devices, especially if the task requires that the tutorial author move around an object and use both hands simultaneously (e.g., showing how to replace a bike derailleur).

For this reason, we extended our ShowHow multimedia tutorial system to support head-mounted capture. Our first approach was simple: a modified pair of glasses with a Looxcie camera and laser guide attached. While this approach interfered with the user’s vision less than other solutions, such as a full augmented reality system, it nonetheless suffered from an array of problems: it was bulky, it was difficult to control, and without a display feedback of the captured area it was hard to frame videos and photos.

Our first head-mounted capture prototype

Luckily, Google Glass launched around this time. With an onboard camera, a touch panel, and display, it seemed an excellent choice for head-mounted capture.

allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen” width=”560″ height=”315″>Our video application to the Glass Explorers program

To test this, we built an app for Google Glass that requires minimal attention to the capture device and instead allows the author to focus on creating the tutorial content. In our paper, we describe a study comparing standalone capture (camera on tripod) versus head-mounted (Google Glass) capture. Details are in the paper, but in short we found that tutorial authors prefer wearable capture devices, especially when recording activities involving larger objects in non-tabletop environments.

Finally, based on the success of Glass for capture we built and tested an access app as well. A detailed description of the tool, as well as another study we ran testing its efficacy for viewing multimedia tutorials, is the subject of an upcoming paper. Stay tuned.